The Wave

Recently I read The Wave, by Todd Strasser. The book is about a history teacher who starts a "youth group" as an experiment to show his class what life in Nazi Germany was like. The novel was based on a real incident that happened in a California school in the 1960s. The book was only 176 pages and adapted from a screenplay about the same event.

I enjoyed the book and found it interesting to see how one small experiment can quickly go out of hand. However, the problems I had with the book came from the fact that it is adapted from a screenplay. While reading, I found the dialogue quite dry during some points of the book. There was also a lack of detail that made picturing the characters and the setting hard.  The characters were also 1 dimensional to an extent and did however, go through some character development.

However, this book is more focused on the ideas presented in it. "Ben shook his head. "No, as a matter of fact, less than ten percent of the German population belonged to the Nazi Party." "Then why didn't anyone try to stop them?" Amy asked." (Strasser 18). The quote above shows one of the ideas that the experiment tested. How was a minority able to subjugate an entire population and the rest of the population be okay with it? How was one person able to make that minority obey their orders without question? After reading, I think that the characters and the setting are used to make the book more interesting and really show the ideas that the book is about. This book presents some interesting ideas, but doesn't do the best job of showcasing them.